Office Uprising (2018) - Didn't know what it wanted to be

About twenty years ago a small independent comedy called 'Office Space' was released.  You may not have heard of it, but - trust me - it was smart, funny, well-acted and even touching with its characters going through actual 'arcs.' But, more than that, it really summed up something that many of us have experienced in life - working in a big, soulless office.

Then, a couple of years later, 'Shaun of the Dead' came along and brought the 'comedy-zombie' genre to new heights. 'Office Uprising' is basically someone taking the two films and smashing them together - not the worst premise for a horror/comedy B-movie, but sadly the writing talent isn't strong enough to make this one even come close to what it seemed to be based on. 

Most of the characters are just cliches.  Some of the more sympathetic protagonists are okay, but anyone who you're meant to hate - you'll hate.  They're just too damn nasty to be believable as real colleagues you have to spend your life 9-5 with every day.  I've worked in similar big offices and, despite coming across some real nasty pieces of work, most hostility was done behind people's backs, not coming directly up to someone and being absolutely racist to their face!  It was just too on the nose.

The it came to the zombies.  And, my question was, are they actually the undead?  I know '28 Days Later' went to great lengths to point out that the monsters were 'infected' rather than reanimated corpses, but here they're everything from zombies to normal people.  The problem was that, sometimes they're those 'sprinting' type zombies ('Dawn of the Dead' 2004 and '28 Days Later'), sometimes they're slow and shuffling like the Romero style of 'The Walking Dead.' Other times you can actually talk to them and reason with them, making them more akin to 'The Crazies' in Romero's other - lesser-known - horror classic.  The trouble with this is that the monsters effectively take on whatever characteristics they need to in a scene, simply just to allow the heroes the chance to survive (again).  Sometimes you can even scream in the zombies' collective faces which - apparently - freaks them out and forces them to perform a retreat!

There's some gore in there, but not that much.  The end seems to have more of a budget what with the giant mech suit, but when that comes into play the film - again - switches genre to more of an over-the-top action film.  So we've come from real-life office satire, to comedy zombie film and now action blastathon.

This film really does suffer from an identity crisis.  Some of it's parts aren't actually and it's definitely not terrible, but if you're looking for an office-based comedy with zombies, I'd probably watch 'Office Space' and 'Shaun of the Dead' back to back.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back